The Demise of Innocence
by KeepSmiling1
Summary: For IWSC Writing School: Post-CoS, Ginny has not walked away from Tom unscathed. Dreams plague and confuse, but not necessarily in the way one might expect. How close did the Wizarding world come to having a Dark Lady?


Writing School Challenge: Introducing a Story

Story Title: The Demise of Innocence

School: Durmstrang

Technique: Start Story with Character Building

Prompt: [emotion] Urge to destroy something

Year: 4

Word count: 907

**A/N **Possible OoC elements of Ginny and Tom Riddle as this is an imagining of the potential trauma and ideas that may have haunted Ginny post-CoS

What is innocence? Am I innocent? Am I truly a victim?

These were some of the questions that plagued Ginevra Weasley. She remembered herself on the train for the first time. The innocent and naive worries of that child seemed impossibly far away now. Everything was black and white. Now every circumstance was half-hidden in shades of grey. She envied the clarity of simpler times.

Take her present circumstance. Home from her disastrous first year, Ginny was constantly torn between gratitude for her family's care and a wish to throttle them for the self-same care. Her mum's hugs were the best, but she did not need another blanket for her bed in the summer. Privacy was good but too much was painful. Ugh, Ginny just wanted things to be simple again.

Every night, she was plagued with dreams involving Tom Riddle. She would awaken hours before even her mum, twisting and turning…. Things would be simpler if the dreams were nightmares. They certainly deserved to be considering the destructive nature. Ginny knew better though. She knew the characters involved. Truthfully, she likely understood Tom better than she did Harry. Knowing the motivations behind the destructive urges...it changed things. Her dreams were disturbing, yes. They definitely weren't something that her parents would be able to understand, but they didn't cause her heart to quicken or the hair to stand up on the back of her neck like a nightmare would. They showed the first time the Chamber opened, decades before she was born, and the arrival of Harry. Both dreams were from the perspective of Tom. If she was honest, Ginny wasn't completely certain that she wanted these dreams to end. As much as she wished to have never found that cursed diary, she couldn't deny the role Tom played in who she was today. She couldn't pretend that nothing had happened, at least, not to herself. Having no connection to the boy who became Voldemort was a terrifying concept. Did that make her evil? If she was a real victim, she wouldn't want anything to do with Tom, right? Right?

The dual natures within her - wanting her mum and hating her stifling over-the-top care as well as hating the dreams but not wanting them to stop - was why Hurricane Ginny was at the edge of the property stomping about and de-gnoming the garden. While Reparo could fix the plates, the general consensus was that destructive urges were best served by de-gnoming. Ginny's thoughts wandered during the familiar chore.

For every lie and omission Tom gave, he also gave away plenty about himself. Oh, while everything was going on, he blacked out the inconvenient bits, but they came out now in her subconscious. Voldemort was evil. Ginny could acknowledge that the diary was evil. The Tom who created the diary, however, was he truly evil? Ginny knew that he was responsible for the death of Moaning Myrtle. Her dreams even indicated that Myrtle's death was used to create the diary though she didn't understand the methods involved. From everything Ginny had seen in the weeks since Harry saved her, Myrtle's death was accidental though. Yes, Tom took advantage of it, but had he really been able to consciously kill at seventeen? Ginny didn't think so. At the heart of it, Tom's destructive tendencies had really been motivated by fear...fear of being ordinary and forgotten. He had also been determined that he be able to protect himself against those who would do him harm. In the world according to Tom, everyone was an enemy out to get him unless he had the means to control them. Tom had deemed purebloods as being more easy to control and manipulate than Muggleborns. The anti-Muggle sentiment of Slytherin made Muggleborn students the obvious target population with Slytherin's monster.

Ginny could understand being afraid of being ordinary and forgotten. She thought every Weasley except maybe Bill and Charlie dealt with insecurity due to their family's size and financial situation. Before Tom, a fear of being attacked would have been a foreign concept to her. Family protects family, and she had family to spare. After Tom... well, the point was that she could understand some of his motivations even if her destructive urges were more along the lines of broken plates than petrified peers. Then again, a part of her had caused the petrification of her classmates. A surge of uncontrolled magic caused the next gnome to fly twice again the distance of any of its brothers.

Finally, no more gnomes could be found in the garden. Ginny wished that she felt better, but the only change was the sweat clinging to her clothes. She still kinda wanted to destroy something.

"_Sssomething bothering you, Ssspeaker?"_ A tiny garden snake hissed at her.

"Jusssst trying to decide what to dessstroy next," Ginny responded. After so many months being the vehicle by which Tom spoke as well as having dreams of Tom's memories, it never occurred to Ginny that she shouldn't be able to understand the garden snake.

"_When you figure it out, tell me. I have many sssissstersss more powerful than me who would be willing to help you, Ssspeaker."_

"I'll keep that in mind," Ginny replied distractedly.

Ginny Weasley's innocence died when she met Tom. Her choice to limit her destructive impulses to objects like plates was what ultimately saved the world from a Dark Lady just as dangerous as Voldemort.


End file.
